Month: December 2008
Oldest Ever Lolcat Found
It’s a picture postcard from 1905, and as the folks at Lolcat so ably note, “The differences are clear. Proper grammar and a more formal tone was in vogue back then. But the similarities to modern-day kitten struggles and lolcats are amazing. ALL CAPS is still cool, but most importantly, she also no can has cheezburger. More than a hundred years later, all that’s changed is the spelling.“
Of course in the days prior to high speed film, the aftermath was of dressing up a cat and putting it in a high chair can only be imagined.
The blood stains are probably gone now.
Auto Industry Update
GM is planning to GM to cut production by 250,000 by closing about 1/3 of its plants, and most of its assembly plants at some point in the firs quarter.
One wonders what this will do to the supply chain.
Also, it looks like GMAC is perilously close to defaulting. They are still trying to become a bank holding company, and if they fail, it is likely that thousands of dealerships will have no access to credit.
Economics Update
Well, retail sales numbers for November are grim, down 7.4% from November 2007, and that’s with an adjustment for a late Thanksgiving that is probably excessive, so it is likely worse.
Consumer sentiment rose, but is still at a pretty awful number.
We also saw wholesale prices fall, which can be either good news, moderating inflation, or bad news, deflation.
Overseas, we have the EU found agreement on an economic stimulus pack, with even Angela Merkel backing off Hoovernomics by a half step.
In Japan, a new economic stimulus package has been announced.
Russia, however, is being hammered by low oil prices, and senior officials are now saying that the nation is in recession.
As to currencies, the dollar was mixed, up versus the Pound, down a smidge versus the Euro, and at a 13 year low versus the Yen.
I’m not sure how much of this is all just a reaction to the Senate auto bailout follies, and the the same goes for the price of oil, which was down, but was likely driven by yesterday’s filibuster.
Additionally, retail gasoline is now below $2 a gallon in the lower 48, with New York State crossing that line today.
Election Update
Well, the canvassing board has ruled, and both the missing Minneapolis ballots and the wrongfully rejected absentee ballots, which may total in excess of 1500, will be counter.
It’s a big win for the Franken campaign.
Needless to say, Norm Coleman and His Evil Minions™ are freaking out over this, and they have gone to court to prevent counting the ballots, because they are good Republicans, and a good ‘Phant thinks that counting votes is communist.
When You Get Blasted as Know Nothing Ideologues by Dick Cheney…
It’s official we are bizarro world:
Bush personally lobbied recalcitrant Senate Republicans after Vice President Dick Cheney failed to round up support Wednesday during a contentious two-hour meeting.
“If we don’t do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever,” Cheney told them, according to a Senate Republican aide, evoking the president whose inaction is widely blamed for helping trigger the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
Dick Cheney was right…I can’t believe that I said that.
Did the Dems Punk Bush and the Republicans?
Because, after the failure of the filibuster fight over the bridge loans to the auto makers, Bush and His Evil Minions™ are saying that they will take steps to ensure that the Big 3 (Big 2½) continue to function until the next Congress.
In fact, they are pretty much flat out saying that they will use TARP money for the loans.
When you look at the sequence of events:
- Dems suggest that the TARP be used, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- They want Senate approval for the “Car Czar”, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- They want improved fuel economy standards, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- They want automakers to drop lawsuits against California-Type emission standards, and Bush says no, so they fold like overcooked broccoli.
- The Republicans kill the bill that gave Bush everything that he asked for.
- Bush is forced to use the TARP money to keep the automakers going.
It could be that the Dems screwed up in reverse, and that this is all an accident, but it looks to me like that Bush and Paulson (and for that matter, Bernanke) were punk’d.
Additionally, now that this has gone down in defeat, it appears that constituencies for the Big 3 (Big 2½) are coming out of the woodwork.
It turns out that auto dealers, for example, are absolutely incensed at this, and these folks give lots of political money:
“I have never been as disappointed as I am today,” said Versailles [Kentucky] Ford dealer Jack Kain, who was chairman of the National Association of Automobile Dealers Association in 2005.
Once Again, the Germans Are a Menace to the Civilized World
I know, Godwin’s law, but I completely with Paul Krugman calling out the Germans on economic policy.
Specifically, he calls out Peer Steinbrueck, the Germany finance minister, who suggests that spending programs are “Crass Keynesianism”, and indirectly he calls out Angela Merkel, who is strongly resisting spending to stimulate the economy, and is instead keeping, “her trump card – tax cuts – in reserve.”
So in the middle of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, Merkel and Steinbrueck are advocating Hoovernomics.
I understand the hyperinflation of the 1920s and how it shaped German thought, but this is insane.
AIG Again
Well, it looks as if the largest welfare sponge, AIG is now dawdling on its asset sales to return to viability:
The CEO of U.S. insurer American Insurance Group, which is looking to shed assets around the globe as part of a $152 billion U.S. government rescue package, said that difficult markets may delay the sale plans, though certain units have attracted heavy interest.
The translation here is: as long as we can rely on our sugar daddy at the US treasury, we won’t sell until prices go up, and if we run short on cash, we’ll hit up the taxpayer for some more.
And they will need more taxpayer money, because they are selling insurance at rates that are clearly below cost, so as to rebuild their market share.
They don’t care that they lose money on each sale, Uncle Sugar will bail them out…Again…and Again…and Again…and Again…
Just in Case You are Wondering….
The best estimate is that if GMAC defaults, and it just failed to become a bank holding company, 40% of the showrooms would likely shut down, because they have no other source of credit.
If GM goes Chapter 11, GMAC would necessarily default. There have to be counter party agreements on its debt that would force it to.
Another Failure of Economic Philosophy
The economic philosophy of the free trade Evangelicals is not just destroying our banking system, it’s also creating starvation in poor nations:
Inside and out, the rusted towers of El Salvador’s biggest grain silo show how the World Bank helped push developing countries into the global food crisis.
Inside, the silo, which once held thousands of tons of beans and cereals, is now empty. It was abandoned in 1991, after the bank told Salvadoran leaders to privatize grain storage, import staples such as corn and rice, and export crops including cocoa, coffee and palm oil.
…
“The World Bank made one basic blunder, which is to think that markets would solve problems of such severe circumstances,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon. “But history has shown you need to help people to get above the survival threshold before the markets can start functioning.”
It appears that the person who got this ball rolling, with “structural adjustment” loans, which required countries to disinvest in staples in favor of cash crops for export, was that guy who ran the Vietnam war so well, little Bobbie McNamara.
Cover-Up Much?
It appears that Michael Mukasey and His Evil Minions™ are refusing to provide documents to the Obama transition team.
It appears that they are unwilling to supply the torture and snooping memos drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel for the CIA and the NSA:
The opinions, some of which have been released to Congress in redacted form, contain the legal rationale of the NSA’s warrantless spying program and the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies, among other intelligence initiatives.
The claim is that the spy agencies have, “own equity or interest in the information.”
Un-dirty-word-believable.
OK, This Might Explain why NASA is so Dysfunctional
It appears that the relationship between Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator, and Lori Garver, head of Obama’s space transition team are not going well.
More accurately, the relationship between the current NASA Administrator, and the , a former NASA associate administrator now working for Obama, has gone completely pear shaped, and it appears to be Griffin’s doing:
In a heated 40-minute conversation last week with Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator who heads the space transition team, a red-faced Griffin demanded to speak directly to Obama, according to witnesses.
In addition, Griffin is scripting NASA employees and civilian contractors on what they can tell the transition team and has warned aerospace executives not to criticize the agency’s moon program, sources said.
This is completely whack…..You have a program that you want to continue, and you proceed to piss off the transition team, and institute gag orders, when you cannot help but know that this will insure your rapid exit in January.
This is more than nuts, this is “Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich” nuts.
Obama Staffing Update
Nancy Sutley as head of the the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
She is also Obama’s first “out” appointment, being a member of Hillary Clinton’s LBGT committee.
Election Update
In Minnesota, it looks like there were twice as many improperly rejected absentee ballots as previously thought, so in addition to the challenges, we now have something on the order of 2,000 wrongly rejected absentee ballots.
here is the part that I do not get:
The fate of those ballots is hotly contested but unclear.
On Friday, the state canvassing board, made up of four judges and the secretary of state, will decide whether to count the votes on those ballots that election judges mistakenly didn’t count on Election Day.
If they were legal votes, why shouldn’t they be counted?
Is there something in the finer points of MN election laws that I don’t get?
Economics Update
Woah, new claims for jobless benefits just jumped by 58,000, to 573,000, a 26 year high.
Continuing claims, which is a far less noisy metric, also jumped to a 26 year high, 4.43 million, up from 4.09 million.
In real estate, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage hit 5.47%, a 4½ year low, and forclosures fell in November, but this appears to be as a result of new state laws requiring more time for the process and/or temporary moratoriums, so there will likely be a significant spike in the next few months.
In the more general economy, we have a first, or at least a first since the Federal Reserve began collecting the data in 1951, the level of consumer debt held in the US has fallen, by 0.8%.
Of course, consumer net worth fell by 4.7%, so it’s a net loss.
In international finance, the Swiss Central Bank cut its interest rate by 50 basis point, and China’s exports fell 2.2% year over year, the steepest drop in nearly a decade.
In currency, the dollar weakened significantly, by about 4¢.
My guess is that it was some combination of extremely low interest rates in the US, or the demonstration of batsh%$ insanity by the Republican senators on the auto bailout vote.
In energy, oil is back above $45/bbl on strong calls by OPEC for production cuts, and retail gasoline prices continued their slide.
American Heros
I don’t know that I would be strong enough to argue for due process rights for terrorists who killed my family:
Two dozen people who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks issued a statement on Wednesday denouncing the Guantanamo war crimes trials as illegitimate, shameful and politically motivated.
Seriously, these are people who are doing I’m sure is a very difficult thing.
Sit Down Strike Ends: Workers Get Owed Benefits
Bank of America and JP Morgan loaned a total of about 1¾ million to the owners, with specific stipulations that it be paid for, “60 days severance wages, vacation pay and a two-month extension of health insurance.”
Still, the more I hear, the more I think that the banks were set up by the owners, who were attempting to close down the plant, because they set up a new one down the road.
Murtha Calls for Cuts in DoD Budget
This is no surprise. Anyone with eyes can see that the defense budget is wasteful, bloated, and not serving the current security needs of the country.
It’s also refreshing that he wants to bring the “emergency wartime supplementals” back into the regular budget process, as well as noting that the defense procurement process is broken.
Of course, he also gets on his high horse about reinstating the draft, where I have mixed emotions.
Scary Stock Market Picture
Courtesy of Devilstower on Daily Kos.
Note that with the SEC, CFTC, etc., we are still almost off the bell curve.
I normally don’t do stock market numbers, too much noise and mass hysteria there, but this does appear to be a Black Swan moment.